


make me an offer i won't refuse

by anthropologicalhands



Category: The Godfather (1972 1974 1990)
Genre: Conversations, F/M, Family Dynamics, Kay doesn't accept Michael's proposal immediately, Kay is pragmatic and tries to understand what she's getting into, Missing Scene, POV Female Character, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-09 06:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17401661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthropologicalhands/pseuds/anthropologicalhands
Summary: The second courtship of Kay Adams by Michael Corleone begins with a marriage proposal.





	make me an offer i won't refuse

Before his father’s shooting, Michael had not formally asked Kay to marry him. Not on a bended knee. He had spoken instead of details to arrange, dates to set, and his father’s blessing to obtain; that was all they would need to move forward. And that had been all she wanted; no need for elaborate rituals.

Now, three years later, on the drive back to her parents’ house, Kay wipes at her eyes with the back of her glove, keeping as quiet as possible as she struggles to hold onto her composure. Michael isn’t looking at her but straight ahead, through the overhanging branches of the New Hampshire foliage that frames the streets. The driver speaks to him in Italian –Michael’s terse response elicits a deep roll of laughter.

Kay takes a deep breath, to keep the well inside herself tightly sealed, and considers what he has asked her.

In school, Michael had been a good student, but not especially diligent; instead, his strength lay in his tenacity. He had a way of arguing that was inexhaustible, speaking softly, never out of turn, never aggressive but relentless, pushing until he could catch his opponents in a draw or route them entirely. She knows he is persistent.

She worried for him while he was away at war, but it had been more of an intellectual fear than a primal fear. She had missed him, been heartsick for him, but never truly felt for a moment that he would not return to her. He was too smart to allow himself to die at the hands or the mistakes of others.

These last few years have not been like that. She has been left stranded and bewildered, cut off from all contact, not just by him but by his family, who swore that it would be dangerous to reach out to him. They were never unkind, but they never yielded, either. She was not family. She was an outsider.

It took time to come to terms with that, but she feels she’s done well enough. She’s back in her home town, and that is fine, and she’s teaching, which she likes, and she has not yet taken another lover but not because she lacks options.

But now here he is again, having been home a year without even calling her, not even as a friend. And now when he comes to her home, it’s not as a friend but again as her suitor. He comes with an offer for her to join his family, the way he has rejoined them, as if they can still have the future they once wanted.

The cogs will start turning if she says yes now, sure and steady, and he will turn their talk to wedding plans, of the formal ceremony they will need to arrange, because things are different now that his father has been shot and his brother killed. Now it must be a family event.

If she demurs to consider the question for longer, he will not just leave her alone to contemplate the question alone. Michael was a soldier, became a war hero. He knows how to analyze and assess a conflict, to press his advantages. He will press every advantage he has so that she gives the answer he is waiting for.

Why not say yes now? A yes would be faster. More efficient. 

After all, Michael doesn’t trifle.

Michael doesn’t do things he doesn’t want to do.

Kay takes the minimal comfort those facts offer. He would never have returned if his intentions weren’t genuine.

Why _wouldn’t_ she say yes? She still loves him, after all. Isn’t that all that’s supposed to matter?

The driver pulls up to the curb in front of her house and cuts the ignition. When she turns towards Michael, she finds that she already has his total attention, his request still behind his eyes, waiting for her answer.

“I’m expected at home for dinner tonight,” she tells him. “But Michael, I have a lot to think about. I can’t give you an answer right now.”

“Of course,” he says. “Go ahead and think on it a little bit. I’ll give you my number at the hotel, so you can reach me when you have an answer.”

“You aren’t going back to New York right away?”

He shakes his head. “I’m going to be in New Hampshire through Monday.”

“I didn’t know your father did business up here,” she says, careful to keep her tone neutral.

“He doesn’t, this is my own business. Tom will let me know if my father has any need of me.”

“How is Tom?” The words come out of Kay’s mouth before she can even consciously think of them. “How are they all doing?”

Michael smiles slightly. “Well enough. They’ve been asking about you. Everyone’s missed you. Especially Connie. Even if you say no, you should come down to the city and pay them a visit.”

“If we get there,” says Kay carefully.

“What gets us there?” he asks, not leaning forward, still with his legs crossed and well on the other side of the seat but facing her fully.

How like Michael.

“I think you and I should have dinner together. Alone.” Kay twists her handkerchief between her hands. “Tomorrow, even.”

“Tomorrow.” Michael gives a matter-of-fact nod, and for a moment she is painfully reminded of the last time she saw him: that silent, tense dinner and their plans for him to meet her at her father’s house. Before he was accused of murder. Before he all but confirmed that he committed murder in his father’s name, when he once said he would never be anything like them.

She hesitates. “It’s been a long time, Michael. Things have changed.”

Michael’s gaze doesn’t leave hers.

“Of course,” he echoes quietly. Always quietly. “Things changed.”

Kay lets herself out of the car.

~

She isn’t particularly surprised when he shows up outside her school the following day. This time the car is parked further down the block, and his dark clothes stand out prominently against the reds and golds of autumn, watching the neighborhood, both careful and uncaring if the neighborhood watches him back.

Michael has a logical mind, a way of reasoning through situations. He presses without seeming like he’s pressing. He didn’t during their initial courtship, but he didn’t have to, not when Kay was already so taken with the shy-looking boy who walked right up to a girl he didn’t know and ask her to dance, bold as brass.

He knows that her conviction isn’t to reject him.

“I’ll walk you home,” Michael says as she approaches him, glancing briefly at the foliage above him. “I’d forgotten how bright the colors are out here. They look good. Almost as good as they do in the city.”

“I remember.”

Kay keeps walking; he matches her stride and they fall into step together.

“Have you been back there?”

“Not for a long while.”

“We should go to the city. Get dinner and see a show.”

 Kay shakes her head. “I don’t have that kind of time anymore, Michael. Not with students.”

“Neither do I.” He does not falter. “I was thinking that we could arrange a weekend. Like we used to.”

Back to when they would sneak out of school early and take the train to the city. When they used to register as man and wife in order to stay in the same room. Kay gives a noncommittal hum.

“How’s teaching?”

“It’s good. Tiring, but I like it.”

They walk together in silence, Kay occasionally glancing over at Michael’s profile, how sharply it contrasts with the colors surrounding them. She doesn’t fit in much better, she knows—her wardrobe is all conservative grays and blacks and pearls, save for the red scarf she grabbed on her way out. He is still a handsome man, but there is something cooler about him now, a little more careworn. Perhaps from shouldering the responsibilities his father has given him. Legitimacy is not so easy from the inside.

“Do you need to go home right away?” Michael asks suddenly.

“No.”

“Let’s get that dinner, then.”

“Now?”

“Come on, aren’t you hungry?”

She is, actually. School days are long, and this one was longer than usual, thanks to him.

“I could eat,” she admits.

“Is that old diner you like still around? Let’s go there.”

She goes.

~

Rose, the waitress isn’t inclined to gossip, but Kay still flushes at the inquiring look she shoots over Michael’s head as he peruses the menu. He certainly looks out of place here, in a way that he hadn’t the first time she brought him here as a decorated young war hero, back in school and bewildered by his return to civilian life. He is perfectly at ease, not particularly stiff or uncomfortable, but his dark suit and closed face contrast absurdly with the cheery teal décor.

“It’s nice to be back in New Hampshire,” he observes, closing and laying aside his menu. “I never thought I would be here again.”

Rose comes over and takes their order. When she leaves, Kay leans forward, hands folded together.

“Then why did you come back?”

“I already told you, Kay,” he says impatiently, but still softly. “It was a simple question.”

She doesn’t falter. “A lot goes into that simple answer. Michael, it’s been three years. You don’t even know if I have someone else. You didn’t even ask.”

Michael gives a noncommittal shrug. “I figured you’d tell me if it mattered.”

If it mattered. She’s always known that marriage means a lot to Michael. He wouldn’t ever initiate anything untoward. If she had been married, she likely would have never seen him again. But something about the way he says it makes her wonder what he would have done if she hadn’t yet passed through a church.

“I know you can’t discuss your father’s business with me,” she says at last. “I want to believe you when you say it will be legitimate in five years. I do, more than anything. But there are some things I am going to need to know to give you an answer.”

Michael shifts, again not quite leaning forward but very clearly signaling that she has his full attention. “What would you need to know?”

“How I will be affected by your business. How children would be affected. _Our_ children.” She stresses the point as he stressed it the day before, so that he knows that she isn’t playing keep away with her heart, cloistering it like a prize.

But if she is to take him seriously, she needs assurance that he takes _her_ seriously. Perhaps she is naïve about the way power moves in the world. But she won’t be naïve about the man she marries.

“They would never have to know anything about it,” he says, immediately. “The family business will be clean before they are old enough to even ask.”

“You keep saying that. But Michael…”

“What?”

“Why did it have to be you? Your father has so many associates-”

He cuts her off with a shake of the head.

“My father is a very traditional man. He would never allow control of his businesses in the hands of people who aren’t his blood, legitimate or not. And Sonny’s dead,” he says coldly. “It was supposed to be him, but he was killed. Tom is _consigliere_ —he has his own role to play. And my brother Fredo…well, you’ve met Fredo.”

Fredo who was often drunk. Fredo who shied away from confrontation. Helpless, harmless Fredo.

“I always liked him.”

“I know. He’s been asking after you, too. You’ll see him again when you come around. My point is that my father is a traditional man who has done everything he can for the people he protects. Now, he understands that the best thing to do for those people is to become legitimate. And that is where I come in.”

“Order up,” says Rose, their food in hand, and Michael leans back in his seat, the conversation finished for the moment.

~

On their walk back to her house after dinner, Kay having declined Michael’s offer for his car, she stumbles on the uneven pavement and has to reach out to grasp his arm to steady herself. When she makes to let go of him, his gloved hand comes up and folds over hers, pressing and keeping it there.

“In Sicily, men and women can’t touch casually like this, even if they are courting,” he says. “They are still very old-fashioned.”

“How strange,” she says. She doesn’t pull back from him but doesn’t press any closer than necessary.

She can’t help but wonder, bitterly, how he learned such things.

But that is unkind. He is sharing information with her, trying to show her whatever it is he thinks she’s looking for, even if he doesn’t know for sure.

What she’s looking for is the boy from Dartmouth under it all, who asked her to dance without swagger or shame, who brought her flowers and kept her letters all through the war. Who said they’d be married in a civil ceremony and whose eyes had never been so obscured to her as they are now.

Michael talks to her about the dreams of the boy with the vision and conviction of experience, but she’s not sure he’s still there.

~

The following day, Michael is back in front of her school, again waiting to walk her home.

Again, she permits him.

They walk past her house today, and further, to the park where the children play. A couple of them wave to her, and she makes sure to return it. Despite her concession the previous night, today they keep a careful distance between them, and Kay keeps her hands tucked deep in the pockets of her coat.

“You brought me here,” he says suddenly, as they follow the winding path around the perimeter of the park. “The first time I came to meet your parents. You said you used to play here.”

“I’m surprised you remember.”

“I remember everything about that visit,” he says obscurely, and his casual manner roots Kay right where she stands.

“I wouldn't have guessed,” she says, no longer caring how harsh she sounds. “If you remember so much, why couldn’t you have called, or written? Michael, it's been three years. Why did you _wait?_ ”

Three years of not knowing. Three years of love, aching and painful. Heartbreak, not easily gotten over.

She can see Michael working his jaw. He has an answer, she knows he has an answer for her, and she waits, her mind strangely, numbly calm.

“I know you’re angry, Kay. But you must understand, you weren’t the only person I lost contact with. I didn’t know when I would be allowed to return home. Or even if I could. I didn't speak with any member of my family; they could never have reached out to me. And after I returned…”

He rubs his hand over his mouth before he speaks again, searching for the right words, trying to draw them out despite his nature.

“I didn’t call or write because I didn’t know if you would want to see me,” he admits. “Not after being sent into exile. Not after getting in my father’s business again, when I still didn’t understand it, after I told you I wouldn’t. I couldn't even consider the possibility.”

There he is, there is the boy from Dartmouth.

And yet.

“What changed your mind?” she asks softly. “What made you think that I would say yes?”

He is silent as they double back through the park, heading back towards her house.

“Things have been changing, Kay,” he says at last. “Like I told you, the Corleone family is heading towards the future, towards a different destiny than I ever expected. My father’s business, his old way of doing things—that’s done. It doesn’t always have to be the way it is. We are planning for a future that I would have never thought possible. Something closer to what you and I wanted. And I had a moment, just a thought, that perhaps you might be open to revisiting that future. I couldn’t get that thought out of my head. But I didn’t know for sure. So, I came to see you.”

She doesn’t know, either. But it is an honest answer, and she will accept it for what it is. A hope.

~

The next day when Michael walks her home, her mother is out visiting with friends, and she invites him inside. He explains that he doesn’t take alcohol much anymore, and she puts on a kettle for tea instead.

There was a time where he hadn’t looked out of place at her kitchen table, when his clothes were lighter and his hair parted to the side. He’s taken off both the coat and the hat, to observe courtesy, but he holds himself so differently now. So tightly contained.

“Would I still be a teacher?” she asks, once she's seated herself across from him.

“I thought you wanted to stay home.”

“After working for a few years to save money. Wasn’t that what we agreed?”

“That was before, when I was going to be a professor. Now, you wouldn’t have to work,” he says, and it’s almost like they were back in school, talking circles around their future, almost always in agreement but sometimes disagreeing for the sake of amusement. “We don’t need to worry about saving anymore. And we would have to live in the mall. We’d have our own house, of course, but we’d stay there for now.”

Kay sips at her tea, considering it. So that’s how it would be. They would be all tied up in the Corleone money, though that would not be an issue, once they were legitimate.

“Then what? Children, right away?”

“As God is willing."

“I would have to convert?”

“If you wanted.”

“What do _you_ want?” she asks pointedly.

Michael shrugs, turning the handle of the tea cup she’s set in front of him. “I want the children to be raised Catholic. You can choose.”

“What about your mother?”

He shakes his head. “She wouldn’t expect it of you. She’s too pleased that I’m up here anyways—she’s been calling me stupid all year for not reaching out to you.”

He always brings his family up in conversation, casual tidbits of things they want to tell her, things she will want to tell them, as if they didn’t freeze her out of news for three years.

“That’s different,” he says impatiently, when she speaks this thought aloud. “That was business, they had no choice. It had nothing to do with you. They’ve always liked you. My father likes you, and my brothers and Connie.” He counts them off on his fingers. “Sonny told me that he liked you—I told him not to like you too much. Even my mother likes you. Kay, you have to understand, that is not nothing.”

There is the slightest note of incredulity in his voice and Kay cannot help the smiles it draws out of her.

“You’re quite the salesman, Michael.”

“Wait until I have five years of practice.”

The thought of quiet, intense Michael Corleone as some fast-talking salesman is absurd, but it makes her laugh and she thinks she sees him relax as he leans back in his chair.

They continue to debate the logistics of her theoretically accepting his proposal until the time approaches that her mother will be home, and Michael excuses himself. As he leaves, he kisses her on the cheek and she allows it.

~

The days pass, and Michael doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and the time comes to talk to her parents.

They have never spoken out against Michael, not directly, though they had not been pleased about his heritage or that he was forced to leave the country on suspicion of murder. However, Kay had told them little about Michael beyond the classes they took together and his deeds as a war hero.  Instead, their information came from opening his letters to her in secret. Once she had found out, she was then disinclined even further from giving anything of herself to them.

And yet courtesy must be observed.

“We’re going to have a guest on Friday,” she tells her mother.

Mrs. Adams doesn’t look up as she sets the table. “Oh? A gentleman guest?”

“Yes. It’s Michael,” says Kay. “Michael Corleone.”

Her mother pauses, one hand extended with the final fork and knife set. “That Dartmouth boy? The one from the papers?”

“The very same.”

Her mother’s lips press together in a fine line.

“When did you invite him up?”

“I didn’t. He’s back from Sicily and he came up to see me.”

“Where is he working now?”

“For his father.”

The frown on her mother’s face deepens further.  “I see. And what does he want from you after all of this time?”

“He still wants us to get married.”

“Kay.” Her mother looks up at her. “He is the son of a crook. You are still young, and there are other prospects in town. There is only one answer.”

Kay remains silent. Her mother may have read his letters, but she doesn’t know Michael.

~

Michael conducts himself perfectly at dinner, charming and deferential in turns, such that there was no fault that they can address either at the table or afterwards. But they are subdued and keep trading uneasy glances, glances that Michael can’t possibly miss.

“I see your parents like me as much as ever,” Michael observes, with more of his old humor than Kay has heard yet. She has walked him to his car after he has taken leave of her parents.

“For better reason, this time,” says Kay.

Michael acknowledges her case with a dip of the head, but admits nothing.

“Well, it can’t be helped,” he says, clearly untroubled. “You can talk them around it if you need to. My family likes you. That’s what matters.”

He kisses her on the cheek before slipping back into the car, and she watches it roll around the corner, the lights illuminating the quiet streets before fading away, leaving her in the darkness.

~

On Saturday they drive up to Dartmouth, and spend time walking the grounds, touring the familiar landmarks and occasionally stopping by the hidden places that they liked so much as undergraduates.

“This was broken.” Michael touches two fingers under his eye, tracing the upper ridge of his right cheekbone. “Go on, touch it.”

There he goes again, pressing forward. They sit together in the park, on a polished wood bench with a great grassy expanse stretching before them, trampled into haphazard patterns by delicate children and their toys and made prominent by their guardians.

Michael’s driver is taking a turn in the shrubbery behind them, so there is some semblance of privacy. Kay pulls the collar of her coat a little further up.

“Go on,” he says, the slightest hint of a smile curling his mouth, like an old dog grin. “I won’t bite you.”

Kay retracts the hand that was reaching for him. “Well, now I don’t believe you.”

“Come on, Kay. I was teasing.” He reaches out and takes her hand in his, brings it up and presses her palm to his jaw, spreading her fingers so they splay and rest over the uneven arch of the bone. “There. Can you feel that?”

“I can. How terrible.” She falls silent for a moment. “Michael?”

“Yes?”

“When did you receive word that it was safe to come home?”

Michael bites the inside of his cheek, turning over a cigarette box in his hands. He takes out a fresh one and offers Kay her own.

“Not until after Sonny was killed. I had to be moved from my safe house. But it turned out that one of my bodyguards planted a bomb for me and it got someone else in the house.” His voice is flat. “If I was going to be surrounded by danger, I’d rather be with family, and my family agreed. They ended the war Sonny started and brought me home.”

This she can understand.

“It’s funny though,” he says, leaning closer to hold the lighter under her cigarette. “I wasn’t happy to see them, when I came home. I wanted to be there, you understand, but it didn’t make me happy to see them. I was happy to see you, though. Even not knowing if you wanted me back, if you were going to let me speak to you, I was happy to see you.”

He doesn’t look at her, save for a quick glance, a mere flicker of the eyes to check her reaction, and that is what cements his honesty in Kay’s mind.

“It is strange,” she admits. “To be happy to see you and to not be sure of it at first. But I think I am now. I am happy to get to see you again, Michael, after spending so long thinking I would never get the chance.”

~

Sunday arrives, and Kay has not said yes.

Michael stops by her house before his return to New York.

“I thought you’d have an answer for me by now,” he says at the door, his voice low so that her parents cannot hear. “I’ve had nothing but answers for you.”

“You have. But we’re different now, Michael, in ways we haven’t even seen yet. We might not be compatible anymore.”

“We want the same things, Kay. If anything, this trip has proved that to me. Tell me that you’re coming to see my family.”

“I’ll come down in two weeks. I have some girl friends I’ve been meaning to visit.”

“Good. And you’ll stay in the house?”

“Michael, I couldn’t. I’ll book a room in the city.”

“Then let me make the arrangements.”

“Michael.”

“You’re making the trip for them,” says Michael, reasonable. Ever so reasonable. “Please. Allow me.”

“All right, Michael.”

Still, despite her delay, when he leans forward for a kiss, she turns her head down to meet him, uncaring if anyone sees them, either from behind the lace curtains of her living room or from across the street.

They are courting, after all.

~

Michael leaves for New York, and the trees lose their color.

Fall in New Hampshire is always fleeting, but scarcely two days pass before they stand completely bare. The children chatter about it, her parents comment on it. Everyone has something to say about the dearth of the colors.

There is an emptiness in her chest that she had forgotten, the space where Michael’s presence so readily filled. It seems to open wider with each passing day.

At dinner, her parents ask about her day as they always do, though a little more jovially than they have before, a little more careful interest. She wonders if they are even aware that they are doing it or, more morbidly, that maybe they are being so attentive as a means of distracting her from him.

“Darling,” her mother presses, trading a worried look with her father. “Please tell me you aren’t taking that Italian boy’s proposal seriously.”

“Sicilian. His family is Sicilian,” she corrects automatically. Her mother’s lips press tightly together, bleaching white.

“Regardless, you can’t seriously be entertaining the idea of marrying him. Especially when you have other prospects—”

“What other prospects?” demands Kay, startling her mother to silence. “When have you seen me considering other men?”

She’s gone on double dates in the last few years, when her friends have needed support. Accepted a couple of invitations from the eligible young men of the town, but they rarely warranted a second date, and never a third. They talk in circles, the men of her home town, and she’s known them all for far too long for their tricks to work on her. Still, they try. All she could think of, each time she is subjected to such awkward fumblings, was how unappealing those gestures are.

How unlike Michael these men were.

Kay is not a particular woman – she just doesn’t like games. She wants to know what she’s getting into and she wants to know what her partner thinks he’s getting her into.

~

There is a part of her that cannot quite accept that Michael’s visit was real, that his proposal and his promises were to be seriously considered, and the night before she is scheduled to take the train she gives in and calls the mall.

“Hello?” A voice that is gruff and male and does not quite sound like a Corleone answers.

“Hello, this is Kay Adams. I’m calling for Michael—”

“Kay Adams, of course,” interrupts the man warmly, pleased, as if he has been looking forward to hearing her call. “Mikey’s girl. You probably don’t remember me, but I remember you. Mikey is not out here right now, but let me go get him for you, huh? A beautiful girl shouldn’t be kept waiting.”

Kay can barely manage a ‘thank you’ before the man is calling for Michael and there is something scratching on the line, like cloth, like the phone being pressed to a shirt. The phone crackles and fumbles and then Michael’s voice comes through the end of the line.

“Kay?”

“Hello, Michael. Who was that on the phone?”

“That was just Clemenza,” says Michael quickly. “You met him at the wedding. If my mother’s not in the kitchen then he’s usually there cooking enough for an army. Has been ever since I was a kid.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It’s normal. Why are you calling, Kay? Is everything all right?”

She’s taken aback by the urgency in his voice. “Everything’s fine, Michael. I just wanted to make sure that everything was all right for our trip this weekend.”

“Everything is according to schedule,” he says, more calmly. “I’ll meet you at the four o’clock, right at the platform. Give the house a call before you head out so that we can make it on time.”

“Of course. I’ll see you then, Michael.”

“I’ll see you then. I love you, Kay.”

Before she hangs up, she hears Clemenza say something indistinct and rumbling with amusement.

_Now he can say it, the poor devil._

~

The next weekend they have set their New York date: a dinner, a show, and dancing. Exactly the sort of thing they would have done two years ago.

Her mother sighs loudly as Kay packs her suitcase; Kay ignores her.

She puts on a dress that is more red than brown and applies lipstick, not the girlish bright red she once favored but something a little darker, a little more muted.

It’s a long train ride to New York, and she spends it with a book open on her lap that she does not read. Michael is waiting outside the car door when she steps off the platform.

“That’s a good dress, Kay,” he says, offering his hand to help her into the car.

“Thank you,” she replies, taking it.

“Is it new?”

“No, but it’s been a while. There wasn’t a reason for it.”

~

Michael sits closer to her in the car, so that with every shift his knee is in danger of bumping against hers, unless she were to tuck herself firmly in the corner of the backseat. She stays where she is, occasionally jostled against him when the driver’s turn is sharp.

“Did your mother tell you that I stopped by? While you were gone?”

She had even called Carmella to offer her condolences when she read in the papers of Sonny’s death, and though they had not spoken long, the warmth in the other woman’s voice had told her that her gesture was appreciated. Carmella had always been a little frightening for her, when Michael wanted them to meet, but time seemed to have kept her warm.

He nods. “She did. She gave me your letters, the ones you tried to give to Tom.”

“Oh.”

“She couldn’t have sent them to me, while I was in Sicily,” he adds, as if reminding her again that the silence had been imposed upon him, not self-enforced. “But I did get them.”

She thinks about the sentiments those letters contained, multiple professions of undying devotion, how separation made her flowery, far more than she had ever been during the war and laughs self-consciously. “They must have seemed so silly when you finally received them.”

“No, they weren’t silly,” he says, earnest. “I was glad to have them. I wish I could have had them sooner.”

~

“Connie’s been asking for you,” he tells her, over dinner, seated at adjacent sides of their table. “For a whole year. While I was up to my ears in paperwork, she was on my back asking when I was gonna go up and bring you back home. You would not have liked the way she talked about you, Kay. Like I coulda just picked you up and carried you back down here.”

She has to laugh. “How did she talk about me?”

“Like you were a sack of potatoes,” he says, pleased with her smile. “Or tomatoes, I suppose. She warned me about bruising you and then smacked me with a spoon like I was one of her children. She has a son now. Rambunctious little devil.”

Kay smiles at the affection in his voice. “That’s wonderful. And how is she and Carlo?”

“They’re okay now. It was difficult for a while. They argued a lot. He got rough with her.” A short, hard pause. “Sonny was ambushed on his way to their house to help work things out.”

“Oh God.”

“I don’t know all of the details, but it was a bad time. Connie was in pieces and everyone was worried for her and the baby. And Carlo was scared sick.”

“Scared?”

“Scared that he killed his brother-in-law.”

Kay drops her fork. “Michael! Are you serious?”

“Don’t worry. I don’t hold it against her. We brought Carlo into the know, having him do little jobs here and there while we move the family business forward, and it’s helping. Helping them, too. Things are better at home, from what she tells me. You can ask her when you see her again.”

“I will,” says Kay. She shifts closer, and he reaches between them to take her hand, tucking it into his elbow.

Kay likes it when Michael speaks of his family—even with the business and all of the baggage that entails, there is real affection there, and he sheds that brisk, insouciant manner of his.

“Insouciant, huh?” he asks, and she realizes that she has spoken aloud. Michael continues, “Thought you taught third-graders, Kay. Isn’t that word pretty advanced?”

“I don’t give it to third-graders,” she says. “I’m giving it to you. You remember what it means, right?”

“I do,” he says. “It means ‘indifferent’. And that’s just not true.” He transfers her hand from his elbow to nestle in his. “Not about you.”

He’s almost indignant, squeezing her hand as though in reproach.

She likes it; he sounds like the Michael she remembers.

Then they go dancing, and he moves like the man she remembers, too, turning her expertly on the floor, never relinquishing her hand.

~

The room Michael booked has two beds.

“Really, Michael?” she asks, turning back to the doorway where he’s hovering, watching her take it in.

He shrugs and studies the corner with the lampshade. “You didn’t want to stay at my father’s house and my mother was uneasy about you being alone. This is what they had.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be staying with the bodyguards, we’re in the next room over,” he adds.

Kay is not actually sure if he really thinks that that’s what she’s worried about or if he’s just not saying what he’s really thinking. Certainly, he has set the stage well – the last time they were in the same room, they looked at the separate beds and decided that they would see how they could best fit together. A rose-decor memory of two young kids, pushing off respectability for another day.

Michael lingers in the doorway. When she makes no move to invite him in, he shifts, adjusts the brim of his hat.

“We’ll head over to the mall around one. Go and meet your friends and I’ll meet you in the lobby.” He leans in just far enough to kiss her cheek. “Good night, Kay.”

~

After a pleasant morning with her girl friends, where she catches up with their lives and is selective about the details of her own, she meets Michael in the lobby and they drive out to Long Beach.

True to Michael’s words, the Corleone family welcomes her with open arms.

Even though she is not engaged to Michael yet, she is ushered in and hugged and kissed as easily as if there wasn’t years between them, as if the toddlers now running around the living room hadn’t been swaddled babies when she’d first seen them. Tom Hagan grasping her hands as warmly as if he hadn’t refused to take her letters.

Their exuberance is warm and intoxicating, and she doesn’t even have a moment to feel out of place before she is pulled into the fray.

Even Michael relaxes, allowing for smiles for his nephews and nieces, picking them up as they demand it, though there is no transfiguration of demeanor as she was hoping for.

Connie especially is demonstrative, throwing her arms around Kay and cupping her face, pinching her cheeks as if Kay wasn’t older than her.

“Finally, it’s so good to see you again, Kay! Now my big brother won’t mope anymore.”

“Nothing is settled, Connie,” she says gently. “We haven’t made any plans.”

 “Don’t be silly. You’re here now, aren’t you?” Connie bats away Kay’s caution with a great sweep of her arms. “Come, meet my son.”

Kay spends the day apart from Michael, nestled side by side with Connie on the sofa and Theresa and Sandra in the chairs across from them, shepherding a rowdy crowd of children between them, interrupted by Connie darting back to the kitchen every time Carmella shouts her name. Fredo drifts into the room and offers his tremulous greetings, before wandering away again. Carmella only makes brief appearances, but she always has a warm smile and a question for Kay’s preferences every time she lays eyes on her. The men of the family rotate in and out of Vito’s study. Michael in particular remains inside for long stretches of time, emerging only when his father does.

Despite most of the people in the house being strangers to her, Kay could almost say she doesn’t miss his presence, except that she always knows whenever Michael steps back into the room, feels a prickle like fingers along the back of her neck that draws her eyes up so that she catches his gaze. His expression is carefully composed and for that she knows that he is more anxious now than he has been before, claiming that they still want the same things–trying to catalogue her reactions, figure out who she is now, how she fits.

This would be their life, she realizes. Not like their plans before, not like when it would be just the two of them, and eventually children, and church with the family on Sundays and then lunch after, but always back to their own little home. She would always be surrounded by others.

It would not be a bad life.

~

Connie is still Kay’s favorite, warm and vivacious, and the family member most willing to talk about Michael.

“My brother has no idea how to court a woman anymore,” she says, balancing Victor on Kay’s lap. Despite her nervousness, he’s utterly calm, more preoccupied with gumming his own fist. “I would have thought that Italy taught him something, but no. He vanishes for a week, no word to any of us women, and it’s only when he comes back that we had any idea he went to see you. That it’s all personal, not business.”

“I don’t know,” says Kay. “He was quite businesslike when he came to see me about getting married.”

Connie snorts derisively. “All the better that you rejected him, then. Good. Teaches him some manners.”

“I didn’t reject him. It’s complicated.” Kay wiggles baby Victor, making him laugh. “I don’t know how much Michael told you about what happened with us before he went to Italy—”

“You weren’t pulled into my wedding picture for balance,” says Connie dryly, making Kay flush. She continues, “My brother has been different ever since he’s come back. He’s working with our father, but still. He should have phoned you as soon as he got back.”

“How was he?”

“Not good. Sicily changed him. Mikey was never loud, but I’m not sure I like this better. That’s why I don’t mind him sulking around the kitchen over you. At least he has a reason to sulk.”

Kay doesn’t mean to ask, but the question leaps out almost without her permission.

“Did you ever hear from him, while he was in Sicily?”

Connie shakes her head firmly. “I was never told. I never asked, but I was never told,” she says frankly, confirming the question left unspoken – _did the family lie to me because I was an outsider? Did Michael lie?_

It appears not.

“Didn’t you miss him?”

She shrugs. “Of course, I missed my handsome brother, but the men don’t talk business with the family, and Mikey got mixed up in business. He’s still the handsome one, you know, or will be if he ever gets his face fixed properly. Perhaps you could persuade him for me.”

Kay laughs. “It’s Michael, Connie. He does what he wants.”

Connie gives her a long and thoughtful look.

“So do you, from what Michael tells me. Give Victor to my mother and help me set out the cannoli, could you?”

~

“So how was it?”

“It was wonderful,” Kay tells him, meaning it. “I’m so glad I got to see them again. It was nearly overwhelming.”

Michael doesn’t look entirely pleased. “My sister talks too much.”

“I’m glad she did. She caught me up on all of the gossip.”

Michael gives her a curious look. “Oh yeah? How?”

“Just women’s talk,” says Kay. “Though she couldn’t catch me up on all of the new faces I saw, so I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you instead.”

The car lets them out at the hotel. They eat a small meal in the hotel restaurant, talking idly, Michael filling in the gaps in Kay’s knowledge about how the family has grown and changed.

The ride up the elevator is quiet, but not unpleasantly so. Her room is the first one they reach. She slides the key in and stands in the doorway, looking back at Michael.

“Do you want to come up to the room?” she asks. “I can make us a couple of drinks.”

His eyes don’t change; there is no visible shift in his expression.

He knows what she’s asking. He has to.

“If you insist,” he says, and she steps aside to let him through.

~

He kisses her first, when she leans over to hand him the glass. Nothing like the movies: a quick, firm press against her mouth, his hand cupping the back of her neck to hold her still just long enough to keep her there, and then he draws back just as fast, watching for her reaction.

“Were you lonely, Kay?” he asks softly.

“I wasn’t lonely, Michael. I missed you, but I wasn’t lonely.”

He’s silent. She still can’t read him as she used to, but she’s surprised to realize that his thoughts are showing on his face without his meaning to show them.

‘’I’m sorry, Kay.”

For the second kiss, she leans into him and he brings his hands up to catch her, to pull her to him.

She goes slowly, and he matches her pace, exploring each other and getting reacquainted. He’s more solid than she remembers, and stronger, and his grip is tighter to keep her skin sealed against his. But the way he slides his hands up her body is the same, under her slip to brush at bare skin, and so is the way he shifts up on his elbows.

“I haven’t been with another man since you left,” she admits, when they are finished, worn and curled around each other, mindful of the seam between the beds.

Michael is silent.

“Were you with anyone else?” she prompts, heart sinking.

“Not in over a year,” he says at last.

Sicily, then.

She believes him. Deceiving her about another woman is not something he has ever been capable of.

“It’s in the past,” he adds, shifting besides her, over her, pressing his face into the crook of her neck. “That’s not where I am.”

He has been consistent with her, Kay can admit. All of his talk has been towards a future, a shared future, presumptuously at times. Now that he knows what that future will be, he wants her in it with him again, to be a part of his family. Family has always been the most important thing to him, even when he swore never to be a part of their business. That isn’t something that will change. Business will be business, but business would be separate from the personal. And the business would one day be legitimate –Michael is determined to see it through. And she knows Michael.

“I know,” she says, taking his face in her hands.

She can accept that.

~

“When do you want to get married?” Kay asks Michael the next morning, when the shades are drawn and only the barest flickers of light filter through.

“Soon,” he murmurs, the hand that rested upon her hip gripping more firmly, pulling her against him so she fits within the curve on his body. “Very soon.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I watched the Godfather movies last month, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Kay's dynamic with Michael. Especially when they meet again after several years, because Kay isn’t merely weepy—she’s overwhelmed by emotion, certainly, but she's also upset and she doesn’t hide that fact from Michael. She's interrogative, while Michael is uncharacteristically awkward. His proposal to her is hardly romantic, and doesn’t seem to be meant to be, but he's fumbling with it, hardly the Michael we saw prepare to kill his father’s would-be assassins. He almost seems unsure about how to approach Kay now, despite his cool words. And yet in Kay's next scene, brief as it is, they are married. So, what changed? That's what I wanted to mess around with.


End file.
